Yamaha PSS 480. Toy keyboard or powerful synth?

[thetinabelmont]

I love my PSS-480!
You can use the built-in sequencer to make 5 monophonic loops which you can then loop by making empty chord patterns with them. They can use the user defined synth sounds, which means you can then edit them as the sequence plays for dynamic tweaking!
The single user editable drum loop can still use all the drum fills and intros of whatever the base drum loop is. It also sends the drums via MIDI, which means that you can beef them up by doubling them with any other Yamaha portable synth of that era.
It sends and responds to just about the entire MIDI spec, which gives it great ability to work with external sequencers and hardware, and you can also back up your entire song and patch memory via MIDI SysEx Dump.
The FM synth is capable of some surprisingly deep sounds, although some of the settings you need aren't available from the front panel, so I just start with an internal sound that has that parameter set correctly.
A few effects can also beef up the sound a lot.
I like it best with a slap-back ping-pong echo slaved to the beat, and a small amount of echo.
PSS-480 is still one of my favorite keyboards... It's got great depth!

[SamiJumppanen]

Interesting. I have another interesting Yamaha, the DSR-1000. Although it shows the parameter values as rows of red LEDs only, the sound manipulation is quite versatile. From presets to custom sounds easily. Also full sys-ex, which I haven't yet explored. 4-op.